Centre pruning govt jobs

bangalore: the 12,200 central government posts that will be abolished by march 2002, have been finalised based on the lists submitted by the respective departments, union expenditure secretary (finance) c.s. rao said on thursday. he was participating in a video conference with bangalore-based journalists from new delhi after presentation of the union budget.describing the voluntary retirement scheme (vrs) as attractive, he said employees have the option of either opting for vrs or await a posting in other departments. ``in case they don''t want to seek vrs, they can await posting to another department. we also pay employees ex-gratia. the centre hopes state governments will follow the lead,'''' he said. a total of 42,200 posts have been identified as surplus manpower. rao felt the hike in kerosene prices is inevitable because subsidies cannot be permanent. ``the governments are trying to protect the forest reserves. and a re 1 increase will not encourage them to use forest resources as fuel.'''' state electricity boards in the country incur a re 1 loss for each unit produced and the respective state governments have been asked to evolve strategies to decrease the transmission and distribution losses, rao added.